


one kiss, two kiss (red kiss, blue kiss)

by tentaclemonster



Category: Meddling Kids - Edgar Cantero
Genre: 5+1 Things, Implied/Referenced Body Horror, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Underage Drinking, childhood sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21958480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentaclemonster/pseuds/tentaclemonster
Summary: Five times Nate Rogers didn't get a kiss and one time he did.
Relationships: Nate Rogers & Adam, Nate Rogers & Andrea "Andy" Rodriguez, Nate Rogers & Joey Krantz, Nate Rogers & Kerri Hollis, Nate Rogers/Peter Manner
Kudos: 20





	one kiss, two kiss (red kiss, blue kiss)

_ One: Nate, 7 & Andy, 8 _

Nate Rogers doesn’t believe in monsters, but if he absolutely  _ had _ to believe in them then he still thinks he’d never believe in monsters who live in closets or under beds. 

He could accept that a monster might hide in those places, sure, (especially if that monster is actually a person  _ dressed _ as a monster; see: Carl Thompson, an embezzling CEO who the Blyton Summer Detective Club had chased and ultimately found hiding in a closet behind a rack of his wife’s dresses, Frankenstein mask still covering his face, just earlier this month) but the idea than any creature would choose to  _ live _ in such a place, to make such cramped and messy and dust covered quarters their home, seems beyond the realm of things that Nate is willing to believe.

Nate, who wouldn’t call himself a neat freak but who only really likes clutter that has a purpose or that has interesting things buried within it that he can scavenge out of the mess. 

Nate, who can handle the kind of dust that comes from old books at the library that haven’t been checked out in twenty years but not the kind that comes from under a bed that hasn’t been vacuumed since ever.

Nate, who does not believe in monsters who live in closets because he really can’t relate but who is now willing to revise his opinion that monsters might be – occasionally, on a non-permanent basis – in closets because the closet he’s in now contains someone who is looking pretty damn monstrous.

That someone being Andy and her monstrous attributes being, in order of least to most intimidating:

  * flaring nostrils
  * mouth down-turned in a severe frown
  * hard, glaring eyes
  * and two hands balled up in white-knuckled fists on either side of her legs which are crossed Indian-style in front of her



Everything about Andy’s look is a threat and for the first time ever, it’s a threat against  _ Nate _ .

Nate, honestly, doesn’t appreciate being threatened. 

It’s not like it was  _ his _ idea to play seven minutes in heaven – he’d wanted to stay up in his room and read tonight. 

Kerri is the one who got the idea to invite a bunch of other kids over, to play music that Nate thinks is way too loud, and to play that stupid game. She’d also been the one who dragged Nate down to the living room, insisting that he not be such a  _ ‘stick in the mud’ _ and stay up in his room all alone, an evening that had sounded perfectly fine to  _ Nate _ but then again, Kerri is always dragging Nate off into things he didn’t want to be dragged into, like since she thinks that since she’s his cousin and not his sister, she has to overcompensate by being even more of an annoying older sibling than what’s usual.

Nate had tried to get out of it, obviously. Had brought up the possibility that he’d spin the bottle and it would land on Kerri and they’d have to go into the closet together and everyone would say they’d kissed in there even though, ew, gross, Nate would never.

It should’ve worked.

It didn’t.

All it did was get Kerri to scrunch up her nose and shake her head. 

“Mathematically, there’s less than a ten percent chance the bottle will point to me,” she told him, “but I’ll get up to get more chips or something when it’s your turn to lower the odds.”

And that was that. Nate was forced to come down and join the party and math had, at least partially, been on his side because when he spun the bottle it didn’t point to Kerri at all – no, that empty coke bottle had spun and spun and  _ slowed  _ before crawling to a stop with it’s open mouth pointing accusingly at  _ Andy _ instead of Kerri, something that Andy reacted to just as she would if this were the witch burning times of Salem and that coke bottle was instead a finger that was accompanied by a scream of, “Her! She’s the witch! Burn her!”.

Things had not improved upon their reluctant shuffle into the closet, the door closing behind them with the loud thumping of pop music and the giggles of the other kids behind them.

Both Nate and Andy had sat down on opposite ends of the closet and then just – stilled. Andy looking at Nate the way she looked at Creepy Roger Mason who was always loitering around the playground and making weird comments to all the girls. Nate looking at Andy like she was a bear who would have him for dinner if he so much as twitched.

Nate, while looking, lets his thoughts run through a few important facts which include: the light above them is flickering like the lighting in a bad horror movie. Something sharp like the corner of a shoe box is digging into his back and he doesn’t like it. A moth-bitten coat is hanging above him just long enough to brush across the top of his head and that’s even more annoying than the shoe box. He kinda has to sneeze. Seven minutes can’t really last  _ this _ long.

And, the most pressing of all, he has no desire whatsoever to kiss Andy Rodriguez.

In fact, Nate is pretty sure he wouldn’t want to kiss Andy even if he wasn’t totally positive that she’d tear his head off if he tried. Andy is non-kissable to him in a similar way that Kerri is non-kissable, just with less of an ick factor and more of a deep sense of antipathy. Like potato salad at a potluck dinner – Nate isn’t so grossed out by the idea of it that he’d pick up the dish and dump it in the trash, but he would still happily walk by it on the way to the mac and cheese.

Nate doesn’t think Andy would like that comparison very much, but for some reason, it seems pertinent to say the main point of his thoughts out loud anyway.

“I don’t want to kiss you,” he says. 

And to this Andy shoots back immediately, a little viciously, “Who asked you to?” 

So maybe saying it wasn’t a good idea.

But then maybe it  _ was _ because Nate can see the whiteness of her knuckles leave her clenched fists and how, after she shuffles a little to get the feeling back in her legs, she seems more relaxed than she did before.

Nate, apparently, made the right move in saying that. He’s been reduced down from a red level threat to a boring old yellow and Andy has likewise been reduced in his eyes. Less of a bear, more of an annoyed cat, and therefore there’s less of a chance of Nate being mauled so long as he keeps his distance.

The seconds tick away and the pop music outside continues to thump but the giggles on the other side of the door are long gone and – no, seriously, seven minutes can’t possibly last  _ this _ long, can they?

“Do you think the rest of them forgot about us?” he asks. Nate is slightly worried about the fact that he is actually concerned about that possibility.

Andy scoffs. “Kerri wouldn’t do that.”

Nate makes a doubtful noise. 

“She  _ wouldn’t _ ,” Andy insists, vehement and maybe even a little offended on Kerri’s behalf. “She knows I didn’t want to play this dumb game anyway. She wouldn’t just leave me in here with some  _ boy _ .”

Nate’s a little offended at being called  _ some boy _ himself and he opens his mouth to respond, but what comes out instead is a loud, whuffing, wet explosion of a sneeze that somehow comes out of both his nose  _ and _ his mouth and sends a spray of spit across the closet – and right into Andy’s face.

Andy screeches in surprise and jumps up, then lets out a loud curse when her head bangs against the clothes rod and some metal hangers on it when she stands. 

“Oh, you’re so  _ gross _ , Nate!” she cries, and then – heedless of the rules of seven minutes in heaven – throws open the closet door and rushes out. 

When Nate peers out, it’s to the surprised stares of the rest of the party waiting just outside.

“Dude,” some boy Nate doesn’t even know the name of says, “it’s only been four minutes.”

Yeah, Nate thinks.  _ Right _ .

*

_ Two: Nate, 8 & Kerri, 9 _

Kerri is still sulking by the time she and Nate get back to her house, her dejection evident from the scowl on her face (that had only temporarily disappeared for moments at a time every time someone’s door opened and an almost-stranger greeted them with smiles, guesses as to what their costumes were, and a big bowl of candy they were instructed to take only  _ one _ piece out of each) to the slump of her shoulders to even her bright red curls which also somehow seem to  _ droop _ a little in sympathy with the mood of the person whose head they’re attached to.

Nate isn’t positive, but he’s pretty sure the fact that more people instantly recognized his costume – Indiana Jones – and so few could recognize Kerri’s Ms. Frizzle has something to do with her being more subdued than she was when Nate arrived and she saw that he wasn’t dressed like Bill Nye like she’d wanted (and begged and pleaded for) him to.

Nate really can’t help but feel  _ bad _ about it, even though he knows he never promised to dress up like Bill Nye in the first place, though – okay, maybe he might have made Kerri  _ think _ he might, that he’d  _ consider _ it just so she’d get off his back about it but – but – but. 

That didn’t count as a promise, did it? Nate didn’t think so.

Still, he does feel a little guilty. 

Even if his Indiana Jones costume  _ is _ way cool – much,  _ much _ cooler than Bill Nye would have been, not that he’d ever tell Kerri that.

Kerri throws herself down on the living room floor with a sigh five times bigger than she is and promptly dumps her neon orange, pumpkin-faced bucket full of candy all over the floor before throwing the now empty plastic container over her shoulder, not even bothering to look back to see where it lands with a clatter behind her. 

Nate, with much less of a production, settles down and adds his black, cat-faced bucket full to the pile. He then sits his bucket softly beside of him and uses his hand to scatter all the candy together, to make it less of a mountain and more like a flat layer so that each piece of candy is mostly visible and not buried under a dozen others.

This is their Halloween tradition every year: they pool their candy together and each of them pick one piece they want out of it at a time, taking turns until finally all the candy is gone and both of them have their fair share. At first, this had been a parent-mandated tradition meant to teach them the value of sharing (and to stifle arguments about who had the most candy or the better candy, of course) but eventually Nate and Kerri started to like it and didn’t need adults to force them into it.

Nate and Kerri do rock paper scissors next. 

Nate has scissors, Kerri has rock. 

Kerri picks first then and, predictably, she picks up a Hershey kiss and places it at her side.

This is a little bit of tradition, too, though an unspoken one. Hershey kisses are both of their favorite candy and the annual candy pooling always starts with them each picking the kisses out as their first picks until they’re all gone and they move on to the other candies.

Nate wants to pick a Hershey kiss next himself but when he reaches out, his hand stills over the silver wrapped chocolate and he thinks about how much Kerri wanted them to be Bill Nye and Ms. Frizzle this year.

His hand snatches up a Jolly Rancher instead and he adds it to his bucket.

Kerri, of course, notices. She shoots him a puzzled look and picks up another Hershey kiss.

Nate picks a mini Heath Bar.

Kerri gets a third kiss.

Nate gets a Dum-Dum pop.

Kerri stares at Nate like he’s some specimen she has under a microscope and continues watching him even as she picks out a fourth kiss without even looking at the candy pile. She’s probably already memorized where each of the chocolates are the way a lizard in the desert memorizes where to find water.

Nate, pretending Kerri isn’t watching him at all, nonchalantly chooses a ghost-shaped marshmallow covered in chocolate, and so it goes until Kerri has all the Hershey kisses from the pile in her own pile next to her and Nate doesn’t have a single one.

By the time they move on to the non-kiss candies, Kerri is smiling, happy, and Nate is promising himself he’ll wear whatever costume she wants next Halloween.

*

_ Three: Nate, 9 & Peter, 11 _

“You alright in there, buddy?” Peter’s voice comes in slightly muffled from beyond the door of the bathroom stall.

Nate, inside the stall, is not alright. 

Nate is still soaking wet from the water in the pool he just ran out of and standing barefoot in a puddle on a floor that has who knows  _ what _ kind of germs on it in nothing but his swim shorts that have a slight but rather  _ obvious _ bulge poking out the front.

A bulge that started forming the second Nate saw Peter outside rather soaking wet himself in his own trunks looking – looking – 

Well, Nate doesn’t know how Peter looked, except that something about it caused – 

_ That _ .

And Nate – who isn’t some sheltered  _ kid _ , whose mom gave him The Talk when he was all of five, who started taking sex ed classes in school just this past year, and whose mother (despite her proactive approach about giving The Talk) has not taken any steps to childproof the adult channels on the cable – knows what  _ that _ is and why it happens, knows that it’s all  _ perfectly normal _ and  _ totally natural _ , and that all it means is that he’s a healthy boy on the brink of puberty.

But Nate also has Peter Manner for a best friend and Joey Krantz for an enemy and a locker in the back of his brain full of overheard conversations between adults, snide comments thrown from one kid to another in the halls at school and on the playground, and things he’s heard from commentators with skin artificially tanned to look like rough leather and hair so blonde it’s blinding on the few unfortunate occasions he’s watched  _ Fox News _ because nothing else was on, to know that according to  _ all _ of it there’s nothing  _ perfectly normal _ about  _ that _ happening to a boy because of another boy.

It’s Peter who’s the most pressing in all of that, the one horrifying variable that stands out from all the rest as obviously as Nate’s penis is standing out of his shorts right now, the reason Nate ran to lock himself in a bathroom stall like his life depended on it. 

Peter who would make Nate rich if Nate had a nickel for every time Peter had jokingly said  _ no homo _ after offering a hug or a compliment or some other small bit of affection to Nate, Peter who always laughs softly at the kind of rude jokes Joey Krantz would say about this queer who lived in Blyton Hills or that one (and who, after laughing, would look embarrassed and a little shame-faced, though whether that was for what he was laughing about or because he was laughing at something  _ Joey _ said, Nate didn’t know), Peter who is always polite to Mr. Stephens and Mr. Wallace (the frequent subjects of Joey Krantz’s ‘jokes’) and even rakes the leaves from their lawns sometimes but who also never goes into their house or lets himself be alone with them and acts nervous when they offer him cocoa or juice like he thinks something horrible will happen to him if he gets too close.

Peter who just made Nate’s dick hard and who Nate knows without a shadow of a doubt would never ever speak to him ever ever  _ again _ if he knew.

Peter whose voice is coming from outside the stall door, “Seriously, Nate, are you sick? If you need to call your aunt--” 

“I’m fine!” Nate says, voice a little strangled, while mentally he’s screaming at his penis to go down so he can go out and act like nothing’s wrong. Give Peter a brave face, make up some excuse – haha, don’t look down, nothing to see  _ there _ .

Nate’s penis is not in the mood to cooperate. If anything, hearing Peter’s voice has only bolstered its resolve.

“I just –“ Nate struggles to find  _ something _ to say. “I just think I ate a bad hot dog or something. I’ll be fine in a few minutes, okay?”

“You sure?” Peter, god bless him, actually sounds concerned.. 

Nate can’t stop himself from smiling a little at that. Then he notices that he’s smiling and forces himself to stop. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Well...alright, I guess. If you change your mind just yell and I’ll come running back.”

“Sure thing, Peter, I’ll do that.”

“You promise? I don’t want you to pass out in here or anything. Kerri would never let me hear the end of it.”

Nate snorts. No, Kerri wouldn’t. “Yeah, I promise.”

It’s quiet for a second and then Nate hears the sound of footsteps walking away, fading quietly, and then finally disappearing. 

He breathes out a sigh of relief and sits down heavily on the toilet, headless of the pool water he’s still dripping all over the place.

Okay, then.

Fine.

So maybe – just  _ maybe _ – he might have something of a crush on Peter Manner. Nate doesn’t know where that came from but it is what it is.

He pursues the idea for a bit. 

He thinks about Peter’s face, about his voice.

He wonders what it would be like to kiss Peter.

What if he’d opened the stall door and leaned in and pressed his lips against Peter’s lips and given them both their first kisses?

Realistically, Nate knows what would have happened: Peter would have pushed him away, would have yelled at him in confusion or went quiet in shock, would have  _ hit _ Nate even, and then after whatever he did, he would never have anything to do with Nate again. Nate would be a stranger to him – someone Peter was polite to when he had to be, but who he never let himself be alone with out of fear of being kissed again. No more sleepovers, no more detective club. Maybe Joey Krantz would call Nate a fag someday and mimic Nate’s voice with an added lisp to it and Peter would laugh at it, then get embarrassed, not because he felt bad about laughing at Nate but because he hated sharing anything, even a shitty sense of humor, with someone like Joey Krantz.

Nate deflates at that line of thought like a balloon that’s had a pin put in it – or, at least, most of him does. 

His dick, still enamored at the idea of kissing Peter no matter what might happen after, gets harder and harder until it  _ aches _ from the fantasy.

Nate stays in the bathroom for a long time thinking of everything from naked grandmas to roadkill until it finally goes down. 

This is the first hard-on Nate ever gets because of Peter Manner.

It’s far from the last.

*

_ Four: Nate, 12 & Joey, 14 _

Nate doesn’t exactly know what the hell he’s doing here. 

Well, he means, he  _ knows _ what he’s doing here – he was alone and, for one of the first summers of his life, he was lone _ ly  _ and no matter how much he tried he just couldn’t close his eyes and just...sleep.

Too many nightmares that weren’t really nightmares because he was wide awake when he was having them.

Too many thoughts about what happened this summer, the summer that Nate already knows deep in his gut will be the last one the Blyton Summer Detective Club will exist. 

Too many thoughts about being alone. In that room. With that  _ book _ .

Nate couldn’t sleep and so he’d gotten up and left. Left his room, walking past Kerri’s and feeling more than a sliver of disappointment when she didn’t hear him go by and come out to see what he was doing up so late at night even though he could see the light on under her door and knew she was awake too, walking down the steps and out of the house and on and on and on.

Somehow he’d ended up at the water tower, to the bench some townspeople had put underneath it to make it something like a park, and there he sat in such a daze of nothing that he hadn’t even noticed at first when Joey Krantz had shown up, saying – something, something, something. Something that might as well have been a Charlie Brown  _ wahmmp wahmmp wahmmm _ for all that Nate didn’t register it. 

He didn’t register when Joey sat next to him, either, or anything at all until Joey was pressing the bottle he had in his hand over to Nate and Nate was grasping it by the neck and bringing it up to take a long pull without even thinking about it and --- 

and – 

\--- and his mouth is  _ burning _ , his throat is burning, and he’s suddenly spewing it out and hacking and coughing and his head is coming back online and – 

Joey Krantz is a line of warmth sitting next to Nate on the bench and he’s laughing at Nate like he’s the funniest thing Joey’s ever seen in his life.

Something about that should be shocking to Nate, only Nate is a little occupied sputtering, spitting, and trying to get that hairspray-gasoline-disgusting  _ taste _ out of his mouth. “Ugh, what the fuck---”

“Hey, lightweight!” Joey snatches the bottle out of Nate’s hand just as it’s starting to slip. “Careful with that!”

“Ugh – what did you  _ give _ me? When – when did you even get here anyway?”

“Shit, were you hitting the bottle before I showed up? I’ve been here trying to talk to you for like, twenty minutes. You were like a vegetable, just sitting there staring at nothing. And this –“ Joey waves the bottle in front of Nate’s bleary eyes. “--is only the best whiskey money can buy, Rogers. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t puke it out all over the place.”

Nate squints at the bottle, at Joey. 

It’s not the most startling thing about the situation but what comes out of Nate’s mouth is, “How’d you buy liquor? You’re  _ fourteen _ .”

Joey rolls his eyes like Nate’s an idiot. “I didn’t buy it, dumbnuts, I stole it from my dad’s cabinet. There’s so much turn-around in that thing, he never notices if a bottle goes missing every now and then. He just assumes he drank it and forgot about it.”

Nate should feel something about that, probably. Something bad about how Joey Krantz was all but saying his dad is an alcoholic. Some kind of sympathy from one kid with a drunk parent to another.

But Nate’s a little busy being stuck on the fact that he’s here  _ alone _ with Joey Krantz and he’s yet to get nary a wedgie or a punch in the face from the guy even though, according to Joey’s count, they’ve been here for twenty minutes already. 

Nate should also probably feel something about that, too, that he could be sitting here with the closest thing he has to a nemesis for so long and not even notice, but Nate’s capacity to feel has been a little damaged since everything that happened at Sleepy Lake. 

That’s probably a bad thing. 

Probably the kind of thing he should feel  _ worried _ about.

But all Nate feels is a startling lack of worry to go along with the lack of everything else within him. 

All Nate feels is...empty. Numb.  _ Devoid _ .

Yeah, that’s definitely a bad thing.

Oh, well.

“What are you doing here?” he asks Joey, less because he cares and more because that seems like the kind of thing he should ask right now.

“Pfft. I come here every weekend. What the hell are  _ you _ doing here, pipsqueak?”

Nate, honestly, doesn’t know exactly other than a general sense of post-traumatic-experience unease that made him want to get out of the house – destination: unknown and unimportant but inevitably here – but he’s pretty sure even if he did have more than that, he’d refuse to tell Joey on account of being called a  _ pipsqueak _ .

After a few long seconds of silence, Joey pushes, “Seriously, where are your three pals at? Butch, Sundance, and Manner finally drop you as dead weight?”

“Peter’s the only one whose name you know?”

“I  _ know _ all your names, Rogers, trust me on that.” This Joey says so darkly it comes off as more of a threat than a statement. 

Nate suddenly remembers who it is he’s sitting next to and how close they’re sitting. He shifts ever so slightly away. 

“Peter and Andy went home,” Nate answers Joey’s question because why the hell not. Nothing else is making sense anymore, so why not add to the nonsense. “Kerri is asleep, I guess.”

Nate knows good and well the last part is a lie. Kerri isn’t sleeping any better than he is, but he’s not going to tell  _ Joey Krantz _ that.

“And they left the weakest link all alone, huh?” Joey chuckles. Nate thinks he might mean the sound to be menacing but since Joey Krantz is currently stuck in the first throes of puberty, it comes off as a rasp breaking off into a squeak, like the sort of sound a chipmunk might make when it finds a nut and then promptly chokes on it about two seconds after shoving it in its mouth.

Not exactly an intimidating sort of sound, that.

“I guess,” Nate says noncommittally.

“Shitty birthday for you, Rogers.”

A small flash of surprise goes through Nate at the fact that Joey knows it’s his birthday and he nearly asks  _ how _ Joey knows before he stops himself, tells himself not to show his curiosity to Krantz the way he’d tell himself not to show his fear to a bear in the woods.

“I guess,” he says again.

“ _ I guess, _ ” Joey mimics and then laughs and takes another pull of what Nate now sees is whiskey. 

Nate’s a little surprised  _ again _ when Joey holds the bottle out to him. 

Nate looks at the bottle like it’s a live snake. Looks at it for so long that Joey scoffs and shoves it at him a little more forcefully, the bottle bumping against his chest and a little of the liquor spilling out onto his shirt.

“Don’t be such a pussy,” Joey tells him. “I’m being  _ nice _ here, asshole, because I feel sorry for you that all your friends dumped you on your birthday. The least you could do is be thankful for it.”

Actually, Nate’s pretty sure the least he could do is get up and walk away from whatever the hell this is – that Joey might actually feel  _ bad  _ for him does not seem likely in any possible reality – but he’s gone this long without this going how his encounters with Joey Krantz usually go so why kill a good thing that probably won’t ever happen again, right?

Nate also doesn’t have any desire to go back to Aunt Margot’s house, back to his bed, back to trying and failing to sleep, and he doesn’t know where else he can go that isn’t there or here.

He takes the bottle and takes another swig, grimacing this time but managing to swallow the whiskey down and not even gagging after it burns a path down his throat, though it’s a fight not to. He hands the bottle back to Joey and watches him wrap his lips around the bottle himself, taking a pull of his own.

It’s only then that it occurs to Nate that he’s had his mouth  _ twice _ now on something that Joey Krantz has had his mouth on, that his lips have been where Joey’s lips have been, that in all likelihood his tongue has touched Joey’s spit and his throat has swallowed some of it down with the alcohol. 

That, Nate thinks, is currently the closest he’s ever come to kissing another person. He has kissed a bottle that Joey Krantz has kissed and somehow in the buzziness of his head that’s about one degree of separation away from kissing Joey Krantz himself.

Nate kissing  _ Joey,  _ god what a thought. What a horrifying, outrageous,  _ ridiculous _ thought.

Nate doesn’t even notice he’s giggling until Joey shoves his shoulder and asks him what the hell is so funny. 

Nate doesn’t answer, just leans back against the bench laughing until he feels like he could piss himself – and then thinks he  _ has _ because Joey, in his frustration, decides to pour half the bottle out right onto Nate’s crotch before taking off in a huff to who knows where.

Nate goes home fifteen minutes later half-drunk and reeking like a bar with a wet stain in the front of his pants still laughing half-hysterically to himself. No one is in the living room when he gets there and Kerri doesn’t come out when he passes her door, though the light is still on and he thinks he hears her foot-steps.

It’s the strangest birthday Nate ever has.

He never tells any of his friends about it.

*

_ Five: Nate, 23 & Adam, Age Unknown _

Adam: You can’t be serious.

Craig: As a heart attack.

Adam: You can’t think that Xira the Princess Warrior never banged her friend Galadriel! That’s nuts! That’s crazy! That’s---

Craig: Canon?

Adam: (silently fuming)

Craig: They never had sex on screen. 

Adam: (throws hands up, stands) Of  _ course _ they never had sex on screen, it was the  _ 90s _ ! Do you really think the network would have allowed that? Do you think –

Nurse Angela: (looking up from her copy of Soap Digest at her desk across the room) Adam? Do you need a time out?

Adam: (sits down, mumbles something unintelligible)

Craig: (quiet for a minute) ...Okay, she’s not looking.

Adam: The bisexual subtext is so obvious it’s like a fantasy  _ The L Word _ . 

Craig: But the B word instead?

Adam: (yelling) They’ve kissed! 

Nurse Angela: (sitting at her desk across the room, almost totally engrossed with an article about the potential renewal of  _ Port Charles  _ on HBO as a primetime drama) Adam, don’t make me come over there.

Adam: Sorry, Nurse Angela! 

Nurse Angela: Uh-huh. (flips the page)

Adam: …..

Craig: …..

Adam: (stage whispering)  _ They’ve kissed! _

Craig: That doesn’t mean anything. 

Adam: (angrily silent)

Craig: (silent, but only because he’s taking a sip from his gallon jug of Arizona Iced Tea)

Adam: You’re horrible. Every person in my head thinks you’re horrible. You’re worse than people who wear t-shirts for bands they don’t know any song from, that’s how horrible you are.

Craig: Let’s ask Nate, then – Nate?

Nate: (sitting in an armchair, smoking, thinking of a place far away from here) Mm?

Craig: Nate, do you think Xira the Princess Warrior is a lesbian?

Adam: Bisexual, Craig.

Craig: Really? Does that matter?

Adam: Yes, Craig! It matters! She had significant relationships with both her best friend, Galadriel, and Aaron the God of War! Not to mention the  _ blatant  _ UST with her arch-enemy, Calligraphy!!

Craig: (sighs) Nate, do you think Xira the Princess Warrior is bisexual.

Nate: (takes a long drag) 

Adam: (silent anticipation)

Craig: (silent sipping of tea)

Nate: (blows out a cloud of smoke) I guess so.

Adam: (lets out an explosive breath) Thank you! Nate, I could kiss you right now!!

Nate: Please don’t.

Adam: But –

Nate: No.

Adam: Not even a little – 

Nate: No.

Adam: Well...okay then. (sulks)

*

_ Plus One: Nate, 25 & Peter, Dead But Ostensibly 27 _

Peter is a good kisser for a dead guy.

His lips are soft, his mouth is warm, and his tongue is wet and strong and brushing against the roof of Nate’s mouth in a way that makes him want to put a hand down his pants and wrap it around his dick and jerk off until he comes in his jeans like a gay twelve year old who just got hold of his first  _ Men’s Health _ magazine.

This is, technically, Nate’s first kiss, an embarrassing thing to have at the late age of twenty-five even if you take off the  _ technical _ part of it and actually count it as a real kiss.

Because it feels real, sure. The entire weight of Peter’s body on top of Nate’s feels real, the dick he can feel pressing into his own feels real, and the tongue in his mouth is just one  _ real feeling  _ appendage out of an entire body filled with bones and organs and covered in muscles and skin that are all pressed right up on Nate and feeling as real as he’s sure any living, breathing person would if he were with one of them instead.

But Nate still isn’t quite sure that any of it  _ does _ count because he isn’t quite sure if Peter himself actually counts as, you know, a real person.

Is a kiss more real if you stop calling the guy you’re having it with an hallucination and start considering him something like a ghost-slash-thought-form who you accidentally conjured through a combination of magic, nostalgia, and wishful thinking? 

...is the question Nate would love to write in to a magical Aunt Agony column if such a thing existed, but alas.

Maybe Nate should start one.

Maybe that would pay a little better than being a part-time sorcerer slash part-time thrift store cashier pays. 

Then again, everyone is saying that writing is a dying industry these days so maybe not.

Peter pulls away from the kiss and Nate takes in the full picture of him – his hair mussed, his lips slick wet and shiny, his eyes lidded, his pupils big like black coins surrounded by irises, a lively pink flush at his cheekbones. 

He looks like he’s just got done fucking someone even though all he and Nate have done today is kiss and all they’ve done so far at all is kiss and jerk each other off. It’s a good look. It’s a look that makes Nate  _ want _ to fuck him which Nate is fairly certain is the whole point of it.

“You’re not thinking of me,” Peter says, almost sullenly. It’s a high-crime, in Peter terms, to not think of him. Nate is pretty sure Peter thinks everyone on the planet should be thinking of him at all times, whether they’ve ever met him or not. 

“I am thinking of you. I’m always thinking of you. You’re always here, it’s kinda hard not to.”

Peter snorts. “Oh, you’re a real romantic, Nate.”

“Thanks, I try,” Nate says. He then adds, because he feels like he should: “I’m not lying, though. I was thinking about you.”

“Really?” Peter asks, interested. They’re discussing his favorite topic after all. “What about me?”

“I was thinking that maybe –“ and here Nate’s face heats up a little against his will and Nate hates himself for it. Seriously, he does. “--I think maybe --- maybe it’s time –“

Peter watches him struggle, brow raised, mouth smirking.

Nate glares at him. The asshole.

“I was thinking that maybe it’s time we had sex,” Nate says, and there. There it is. It’s done.

Peter reacts to this statement by laughing in his face. 

Nate, disgusted, scoffs and pushes Peter away with a hand to his face, ignoring how he lands with an  _ oof _ on the other side of the bed.

Still laughing, Peter asks, “So you’ve finally gotten over your necrophilia thing?”

“I don’t have a necrophilia thing,” Nate hotly denies.

Nate absolutely has a necrophilia thing.

Namely, Nate has a persistent worry that that’s what fucking Peter would count as.

_ More _ specifically, Nate is worried that mid-fucking Peter will turn from a seemingly alive and attractive man into the blatantly rotting corpse he sometimes turns into when he’s pissed at Nate and wants to get back at him by making him retch.

Nate has already told Peter that if he ever did it while they were kissing or anything  _ intimate _ , he would not only never let Peter touch him again but that he would never speak to Peter, never look at him, never acknowledge him in any way, and would do everything he can for as long as it takes to exorcise Peter or banish him or otherwise make him just – go away.

Peter, somewhat shockingly, has always respected that boundary even while obliterating a thousand others. 

Nate spent their first dozen or more kisses in a complete state of paranoia that the tongue in his mouth would turn into decomposing flesh at some point but eventually learned to overcome it once he realized kissing Peter was, apparently,  _ safe _ . 

Then they’d progressed. 

Nate eventually got comfortable having Peter jerk him off the more it happened without his warm, long fingers turning into little more than skinless skeletal bones, and then he’d gotten comfortable with Peter’s dick in  _ his _ hand the longer it stayed warm and throbbing and  _ alive _ and Nate could live a little longer himself without having to find out what a penis felt like on a dead body that’s long went past its expiration date.

Sex – actual, full, penetrative sex – is something different, though.

Sex is Peter’s whole nude body on top of Nate’s nude body. It’s Peter inside of him. It’s Peter touching every single part of him, parts of him that no one else  _ but _ him has ever touched in his life. It’s not just Peter’s mouth but his fingers and his hands and his dick and every other inch of skin on his body being as close to Nate as one person can get to another.

It involves a lot more  _ trust _ than just a kiss or even a handjob, is Nate’s point, and considering Peter’s  _ penchant  _ for moodiness and for fucking with Nate’s head, Nate can hardly be blamed for not spreading his legs and thinking of England a bit faster, can he?

_ Dear Aunt Agony, _ he imagines writing,  _ is fucking a ghost-slash-thought-form who has the body and persona of your dead childhood friend considered necrophilia? With love, Horny and Haunted In Oregon. _

_ Dear Horny and Haunted in Oregon,  _ Aunt Agony would reply,  _ expert opinion agrees that such a circumstance only counts as necrophilia if their body temperature is below fifty degrees and they don’t breathe or so much as move a muscle during the act. Otherwise, necrophiliac is a label you shouldn’t feel the need to use for yourself unless you choose to identify that way. With much love, Aunt Agony. _

_ Dear Aunt Agony,  _ Nate would follow up,  _ thank you for your previous advice. I have another question: if my ghost-slash-thought-form is able to make his entire body rot to the consistency of a corpse that’s been left out in the woods during a hot summer and then been put through a meat grinder and he sometimes likes to show me this visage when he’s mad at me to cause me emotional distress, am I justified in putting off having sex with him for the first time because I’m worried that he might do this while we’re fucking? With much concern, Horny and Haunted In Oregon. _

_ Dear Horny and Haunted In Oregon,  _ Aunt Agony would pen,  _ what the fuck is wrong with you? How is that a real problem that ANYONE could have? Also with much concern (for your sanity), Aunt Agony. _

“I’m just saying,” Peter is saying, “you’re worried about nothing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I already told you that I wouldn’t do –“ Peter waves a hand in a vague, gesturing motion. “--- _ that _ and I’ve been good, haven’t I?”

Nate has to concede that, yes, Peter has been good. In that one particular area, at least.

“So, what’s the problem?” Peter whines. “I was named one of _People’s_ _Top Ten Best Celebrities To Get In Bed With_ , you know? Why aren’t you letting me be the best in _this_ bed right _now_? With _you_?”

Peter would have a point, maybe, except – 

“If you’ll recall to, uh, about five minutes ago? I was about to do that. Right before you laughed. In my face. Like an asshole.”

This shuts Peter up for all of one minute.

“Oh,” is all he says when he finally does speak.

“Yeah.” Nate rolls his eyes. “ _ Oh _ .”

“I don’t suppose---”

“My dick is kinda soft now, so...no.” Nate sighs. “Also you really  _ are _ an asshole. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t. I’d be happy to have blue balls for a week straight just to spite you.”

Somehow Peter laughs at that, delighted. Peter is always delighted when Nate can be as mean as  _ he _ can be, though that’s usually only when Nate isn’t being mean to Peter himself. 

“And you think  _ I’m _ the sociopath in this relationship,” Peter says, and Nate can’t help but note the touch of fondness in his voice when he does.

_Yes,_ Nate imagines Aunt Agony would write to Peter, _he thinks you’re a sociopath because you_ ** _are_** _one. The only benefit of this relationship_ _is that you two being together spares whoever else might be unlucky enough to get involved with you otherwise. Please lock yourselves up wherever you are and fuck until you both pass over into the spirit world and never return. With a restraining order soon to follow, Aunt Agony._  
  



End file.
